Westward ho, to ... Pomona!

Pomona College

     "April is the cruelest month," The Waste Land famously begins. Though T.S. Eliot is referring to memory and desire, and not to colleges accepting —or, in most cases, rejecting—prospective students in the days clustered around the 1st. But he might as well have been. Everyone comments on how hard this process is on kids, and it is. A vast game of high stakes musical chairs where colleges entice you to apply, flatter and beseech, so they can spin around and reject you, and then point to their low acceptance rate as proof of their desirability. It's a mean trick. 
     But kids are resilient. Like babies, they bounce. Less spoken about is the effect on parents, who see their dreams not just deferred, but rejected altogether. "Cruel" is apt.
     My high school senior is one of those bright kids who parents don't guide so much as applaud. A dozen years of arriving at parent conferences where we walk in and the teacher looks at us and almost bursts out laughing. What's there to say? He's fantastic. You know. Yes, yes we do. Thank you very much.
     Not that we expected top colleges to echo that. We knew it would be a struggle, a crap shoot, to find one he liked, that would also let him in. The top schools reject 9 out of 10, if not 95 out of 100. A lot of good kids are sent packing. Ours could draw the short end of the stick. I told myself that. But I didn't believe it. Not really.  

Dartmouth

     It is one year and two months since we started the process, flying out to look at Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore and UPenn, the first of 14 schools we would visit. A grueling 14-month trek up Mt. College. "It's all part of the education!" I would quip, putting on a brave face, as we puzzled over maps, tour schedules, admission guidelines. We giddily visited the East Coast: Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Amherst and such. After each school, I'd suggest we race in triumph to the bookstore, buy him a school t-shirt in celebration. This was the one! Wasn't it? No, he'd say. Wait. These were long shots, my boy explained, even for a guy with a 36 on his ACT. At 17 he viewed the situation with more maturity than I did. I almost didn't believe him. What do you mean you won't get in? Have little faith in yourself! But by the time you slice up the various groups — half the class will be women, a third will be minorities, plus athletes, plus legacies, the number of slots going to the army of bright middle class suburban Jewish white kids are few. That's just the way it is. 
     I admired his level-headedness. He examined the numbers — he's so good at that — and decided to go early decision to improves his chances, for the two schools he had the best shot at, Columbia and the University of Chicago. Plus a dozen more for variety and backup. 
     Win-win, I decided.  Either one would be fine. New York is the center of the world. And I work in downtown Chicago, and immediately formed the fantasy. I could see myself taking the Metra electric train—convenient as heck and only $3 — down to Hyde Park, to the University of Chicago campus. Squiring my young genius to lunch, plus a few of his equally quirky U of C friends. Stopping at Powell's Bookstore, then happily back downtown. I could see myself on the train, on the trip back, contentment rolling off me in waves.
     Early decision verdicts came in February. The news was bad. No Columbia. No U of C. To be honest, at first I thought he was teasing us, pulling our legs, gauging our reaction before he sprang the "Just joking!" My faith in him was that high. No, incredibly, it was true. It seem almost unfair. No lunchtime visits to Hyde Park. I felt cheated — how could this be happening to me?—but rallied. Okay, I thought. "That's God's way of saying he's going to Princeton," I told co-workers. They'd look at me strangely, and it dawned on me that they have problems bigger than mine.
     I knew I was approaching this all wrong. It was his life, not mine. I kept trying to remind myself: this isn't about you, it's about him. His school, his life, his future. And to be honest, he never panicked, or at least never showed it. A quiet, studious boy. Our entire conversation when he didn't get into Columbia went like this: Me: "Are you okay?" Him: "Yes." Me: "Promise." Him: "Yes." I worried because he was too calm. That had to be a bad sign.
     I tried to focus on him. But somehow, this kept slipping back into a referendum on me, as a parent, as a person. Other kids were being waved into the top schools. Somehow, the same malign fate that put stumbling blocks in front of me had turned its attention to my son. I had given him this genetic curse: bad luck.  
     Then at the end of March, the whipsaw. Northwestern admitted him — he was relieved, he said, because he had worried there might have been something faulty in his application.  I was relieved too. I had gone to Northwestern, it's half an hour away, in Evanston, he'd be following in my footsteps, which I wasn't crazy about, but okay. It would have to do. A mild cheer. Hail to purple, hail to white. The next day, Middlebury said yes and NU was forgotten. Middlebury is Exeter and Andover gone to college. It has its own ski slope. We would spend four years visiting Vermont. 
     Then Pomona. I barely recognized the name — a college, right? — and kept pronouncing it "Ponoma," then correcting myself. I had never heard of the place before February. He had an airline voucher to use before the end of the month, so visited his uncle in Los Angeles, took a day and grabbed the train to see Pomona. His idea. That's when I first heard the word. It meant nothing to me. He could have said he was going to Tangelo or Emerita. It sounded like a word plucked from a Beach Boys song. "Oh darlin', climb into my Dodge Daytona/ I'll pop the clutch and we'll cruise the beach road/all the way up to Pomona."

Pomona

     No matter. And now he was going to college there. Pomona it is. I fled online. One of the Claremont colleges. Forbes ranks it No. 2, after Stanford. Not just among liberal arts colleges, but among all schools. No. 2. How could that be? They're kidding, right? How could I have missed it? I asked a friend about the school. "Amazing," she said, adding that David Foster Wallace taught creative writing there. It was 20 years ago, and he's gone, but that for some reason helped — this is not a rational process, much of it, but emotional and intuitive. Asking people helped. Everyone seemed to know about Pomona but me. I visited 14 schools, and he picks the one, not only I had never seen, but never heard of. That seemed a kind of justice, payback, retribution for the hubris I brought to the process. "You want to brag, dad? Brag about this...."
     The boy is thrilled. He went online and bought two Pomona t-shirts. He has no doubt — ordered us to send in the deposit now, not to wait. Being subsequently admitted into Vanderbilt and Wake Forest were shrugged off. "Don't you want to even ...?" No. I put in a halfhearted plug for my alma mater. Northwestern has a great reputation, and is so much closer. He killed off that idea in 1o words: "Why would I pay more money for a worse school?" I'm actually the one doing the paying, but saw his point. 
     So now I explain to people what Pomona is: an amazing school, for smart kids who don't need the ivy cache, and their grandiose parents who are being dealt one of those little lessons that fate occasionally serves up to help make a person less grandiose. California is far away, and has earthquakes, but that's where life is taking him. Taking us. I had wanted him to get into a college that I could beat my chest and brag about. A validation. A gold star. But fate would have none of that, and denied me the pleasure, and forced me to think — is that not what college is all about? — to see the ugly solipsism of my ways, and try to do better. I'm still proud — proud that he will be following a trail that he blazed entirely on his own. It's all part of the education. 
      
  
        

So maestro, what's with the stick?

     A good prank needs some kind of expectations of order to push against, and so the general chaos of the web makes a poor environment for April Fool's jokes. Still, I was pleased that a number of readers yesterday truly thought, at least for a moment, that I was changing the name of my blog to "Every gosh darn day," and a few actually complained, which was extra gratifying. 

      Nothing unusual about today's column. I had a chance to talk to a conductor, and leapt at it, asking some questions I, and hopefully others, have wondered about.

Anthony Barrese

     Only one member of the orchestra is mimicked with any regularity. The average guy doesn’t tape empty soda cans together and pretend to play the bassoon, or sit on a chair and saw away at an imaginary cello. Nobody plays the air flute.

     But who has not picked up a pencil and pretended to conduct? You hear some rousing Beethoven symphony, you almost have to. At least I hope you do and it isn’t just me.

     Either way, I’ve always wondered: what, exactly is the conductor doing? I’ve always meant to ask Sir Andrew Davis, conductor of the Lyric, “What are you doing with the stick?” But if divas are stars, conductors are superstars, and the chance to ask him anything has never arisen (well, once, I saw him smoking a cigarette outside the Civic Opera House, but it struck me that a considerate person would leave him be, so I did).

     But when Chicago conductor Anthony Barrese offered to stop by my office and talk about what he does, I jumped at the chance. My first question was: Explain this waving-the-baton business. Musicians seem fairly intent on their music — they aren’t necessarily even watching you. What’s going on?

     “By the time you get to a performance, the great amount of work is done,” he said. “Any conductor who is jumping around, flailing about and wildly gesticulating during a concert, that’s for show. The orchestra is not really paying attention. The real work is done in rehearsal, which you don’t see. By the time you get to a performance, you’re still guiding, you’re still shaping the architecture, musically. But it’s sort of in the hands of God at that point.”

      So why have a conductor at the performance at all? Why not just rehearse, then let them play? Short answer: Stuff happens.
     "The soprano could have an off night," Barrese said. "The trumpet could be nodding off. You're sort of gently keeping it together. You're also trying to inspire."
     Barrese is one of perhaps a dozen full-time conductors who make a living in the Chicago area, including the two stars, Riccardo Muti at the Chicago Symphony and Davis at the Lyric, plus a variety of others who combine university posts and gigs at smaller ensembles. Barrese lives here but conducts for Opera Southwest in Albuquerque and scans the horizon for work, as most do.
     "I do have to cobble together a living," said fellow Chicago conductor Francesco Milioto, who conducts the Skokie Valley Symphony, where he is also musical director, plus is principal conductor of the Highland Park Strings, artistic director at Access Contemporary Music, and fills in as a cover — a replacement conductor — at the Lyric. And he gives vocal lessons.
     "You need a lot of these jobs," Milioto said, but not as a complaint. "I am quite happy. I don't have any other job other than music and am very lucky and very appreciative." (Even stars have multiple gigs: Muti, for instance, conducts here and in Italy while Davis moonlights in Melbourne.)
     Milioto pointed out something I never thought about — that conducting an opera is much harder than conducting a symphony, because not only do you have the orchestra to keep together, but you have to coordinate it with 100 singers and dancers on stage.
     "In opera there is quite a bit of maintaining communication between the pit and the stage," he said. "Half the orchestra is under the pit, so the sense of timing and delay always needs to be dealt with, especially with a chorus on stage. A symphonic performance, it's a little bit easier."
     Barrese started conducting because he needed somebody to conduct his own compositions. While we were on the subject, I had to ask: Classical music of past eras — Mozart, Bach, et al. — is so beautiful; modern music, not so much. What's the matter? Why can't anyone write like Mozart?
     "The more you listen to contemporary music, the less bad it sounds," he replied. "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was seen as crazy in its time, now we think it's gorgeous. 'The Rite of Spring,' there was a riot, people thought it was horrible. Now any decent college orchestra plays it."
     In other words, the culture moves on, and no matter how great something is, if you merely redo it, then you're just aping the past. No matter how exquisite a nude figure you may carve out of marble, Michelangelo has been there, done that, 500 years ago.
     "I had a composition teacher who said that it would be as if rock 'n' roll musicians today were writing in exactly the three-chord style of Elvis Presley," Barrese said. "Things change. You can't go back. You can't write in the style of Wagner anymore."
     That might actually be a good thing. One Wagner is plenty.

Kittens in Yarn Week: Day 2

     My post yesterday on kitties and why they're so cute was really meant to be a one-time deal, sharing the recent Scientific American story on the topology of cuteness. But the reaction from readers was so intense — extraordinary, really — that I decided to continue the theme and make this into Kittens in Yarn Week.
     For those who missed yesterday, not only did I explore the spatial-dimensional qualities of what makes a creature adorable, based on the Golden Section of antiquity, but I further realized that, because the news of late is so grim, and we spend so much time in negativity, bickering over meaningless political differences, some relief is in order. Isn't it nice to just sit back and look at a cute kitty and smile?  In searching for more images of playful puddy-tats with balls of colorful yarn to run for the rest of this week—and there really aren't enough of them, online, so as soon as I can I'm going to hire a photographer, buy some kitties and get busy — I ran into this kitten and yarn joke on cat joke web site.
    Q: Did you hear about the cat that swallowed a ball of yarn?

    A: She had a litter of mittens.     
    Now I suppose that joke itself could be seen as a little mean — it could be very dangerous for a cat to swallow a ball of yarn. She could choke. So while I should point out that the joke is fictional, and thus no actual cat ingested any potentially fatal yarn, I think by passing along that joke, "edgy" though it be, I'm showing that, under this "Kittens in Yarn" business you'll be reading here for the next five days, I'm still the same old Neil Steinberg I've always been, just mellowed and gratified by yesterday's enormous upswell of readership, not to mention commencement of my support of the good folks at Chik-fil-A. (Which is why, as you read here yesterday, that's I've changed the blog's name — "Every g*ddamn day" was so harsh, so negative. Places like WBEZ were reluctant to mention it, and the name scared off potential advertisers. "Every gosh darn day" is just as effective, and has more the spirit of sharp yet forgiving humor I'm now striving for, with none of the off-putting allusions to the deity. Chik-fil-A in no way was responsible for the change; it was just something I happened to do at the same time their ads went up).
      Just so you know the schedule, tomorrow, for Day 3, I'll be serving up three special recipes for cat food, for those of us who just don't trust commercial cat food because of all the waste water created by cat food production. Thursday we'll look at the yarn side of the equation — I've found several veterinary studies that suggest certain colors and types of yarn are preferred by certain varieties of cats. Friday, I will review the top 10 web sites dedicated to showing photos of kittens in yarn. Saturday I look at the hidden history of posters featuring, not only kittens in yarn, but cats with bowls of spaghetti dumped over their heads, or cats hanging by their paws over a cord with inspirational sayings like, "Hang in there!" And Sunday, being the Lord's day, I'll examine whether kittens can be said to have souls — of course they do! — and why we can be certain, based on hard, Biblical evidence, that our cats and kittens will be purring beside the Pearly Gates, waiting for us when we get to heaven. I'll also share some of the outpouring of comments I've received from yesterday's posting.
     Thanks again for all your enthusiasm, welcome to my new readers of "Every gosh darn day," and I hope you enjoy Kittens in Yarn Week, and will stay on for next week, when I focus on UFOs, ESP and Other Amazing Real Phenomena. For next week's full schedule, just click here.

Everygoshdarnday.com welcomes Chik-fil-A.

Why debate details when big issues divide?

     Were I to ask you what color seat you would like on your bus trip to Cleveland, you would probably reply, “But I’m not going to Cleveland.” 

     Were I to insist, fanning a few fabric swatches before you — maroon, a powdery blue, hunter green — you would answer, “It doesn’t MATTER what color, because I don’t want to take a bus to Cleveland!”

     Sadly, this simple logic escapes us when it comes to matters political. We fall to debating specifics — the color of the seat — ignoring a key overarching fact: Some of us want to take the trip; others don’t. 

     The original intention of this column was to look at the state of Illinois with a cool, dispassionate eye and ask: Is Bruce Rauner right? Are we really much worse off under Gov. Pat Quinn? Rauner points to our 8.7 percent unemployment, second highest in the nation. The Quinn people, however, observe that when he took office, it was 11.4 percent. Rauner focuses on the bloat of government, Quinn on how much has been cut.

     Who’s right? The bottom line is, for purposes of conversation, that it doesn’t matter. These stats are specifics: the color of the seat. And no number or group of numbers is going to make Rauner supporters shift to Quinn, or Quinn supporters decide that a rich guy with no experience in government is qualified to run the state. I won’t say which side I’m on, but you can guess. 

     What decides our default, which bin, Republican or Democrat, we live in? I could be a cynic and say it’s your parents’ political party. Most follow the leanings of their parents and never question it.    Having been born blinking into one particular camp, we just shrug and spend our lives there, plucking reasons to justify it as they float by. 

     But pretend, for a moment, that we could actually make the choice. What puts us in one party or another is not pegged to the unemployment levels in Illinois or what the tax rate is, but how you answer the following simple, Cleveland-or-no, five-word question: Is government good or bad?

     Not just Illinois government. All government. If you think government is a good thing, in the main, then you’re a Democrat. You want preschoolers to get that cup of free morning gruel, want rehab clinics for drug addicts. A disaster strikes — and Illinois has been hit with 11 natural disasters since   Quinn took office — and you want the government to show up with backhoes and fresh water. If companies are selling tainted meat, then you want the USDA to be on them like a cloud of hornets.

    If you don’t like government, you’re a Republican. You want to cut taxes and slice deficits until there isn’t any money to fund all those programs that only help people you wish didn’t exist anyway. If companies are selling tainted meat, well, then people should be savvy enough not to buy it. 

     The situation is more complicated. Some government programs bug Democrats: farm subsidies for instance. And Republicans embrace Medicare, out of self-preservation, and blow kisses at the military, as if it weren’t as purely a government function as the National Endowment for the Arts.

     Me, I’m Democratic by breeding — my parents are Democrats; my father, in fact, worked for the government, NASA, for most of his career. And by choice. I make that decision by what I call the Baby Conundrum. If you find a baby on your doorstep, you either a) raise it yourself b) take it to the nearest church or c) call the cops. 

     To me, a) is strange and nobody would do it; b) is theoretical and while Republicans pay lip service, they never call their church to report a fire. The rational person answers is c). You want a government that cares for abandoned babies (fetuses aren’t babies, your Pavlovian bell isn’t ringing) and schools them and treats them when they’re sick. I’ve never heard an argument that explains why that logic falls apart as they get older. To me, the Republican stance against the Affordable Care Act is a shameful nadir of cold-hearted wrongheadedness that someday will be seen as being in keeping with their stance on race and women, and the entire litany of wrongheaded, selfish notions they’ve clung to until the second they’re pried out of their soft little hands. 

     Getting back to Illinois. I would be for Quinn because he fixed the pension mess that grew under his forebears of both parties, and he signed marriage equality into law even though his faith dictated otherwise. That’s another dividing line: Is religion a private matter? Or a whip to make your neighbors/employees do what they don’t want to? Dems to the left, GOP to the right. Oh, and consider a trip to Cleveland. Friendly folk, remodeled art museum. It’s very nice. 

Welcome back to the Steinberg Bakery

     

     Ting-a-ling.

     "Welcome to the Steinberg Bakery. May I help you?"

     "Yes, some rye bread please..."

     "Seeds or no seeds?"

     "Umm..."

     "We use only the finest Hungarian caraway seeds. You can't buy them in this country. A friend's nephew is with the Hungarian consulate. He brings them over in the diplomatic pouch. Rich, pungent, meridan fennel seeds..."

     "Okay, seeds then..."

     "Sliced or unsliced? The unsliced loaf stays fresh longer. But we offer sliced as a convenience for the customer."

     "Sliced please ... "
     "Of course. Always with the easy way. The convenience. Good for sandwiches. Planning a to serve sandwiches at a special gathering, are you?"
     "Isn't Gabby here today? I thought she works on Sundays."

     "Normally yes. But today she has her ... little visitor."

     "Her little visitor?"

     "Yes, you know, her ... ah ... time of the month."

     "Her period?"

     "Shhh, yes. If you insist, but please, I've got angel food cake rising."

     "What does that matter? Does it make her too ill? Tell her Mrs. Mendelssohn was in and asked about her and hopes she feels better."

     "No, not that. Not ill. She feels fine. The intru...visitor. It renders her unclean."

     "Unclean?"

     "Unclean. Leviticus 15, verse 19: 'Whenever a woman has her m-m-menstrual period, she will be ceremonially unclean for seven days.'"

      "I don't see how that..."

     "''If you touch her during that time, you will be defiled until evening. Anything on which she lies or sits during that time will be defiled...'"

     "But isn't that..."

     "Look around you, Mrs. Mendelssohn. Look at the Steinberg Bakery. What do you see? Everything is clean. Everything. Clean. Do you think that is by accident? No. It is not an accident. The floors, swept twice a day. The coolers, the racks, the shelves. We pride ourselves in that."

     "Couldn't she..."

     "Now yes, the actual Biblical passages do not technically forbid a woman who is in that way from working in a bakery...oh, here's your rye bread, with seeds, sliced. Anything else?"

      "Oh thank you. Yes. You have kolatchke?"

      "Raspberry, apricot, strawberry..."

      "Let me have ..."
      "Apple, blueberry, cherry..."
      "A half dozen cherry please."
      "Lemon, cinnamon, cheese..." 

      "Six cherry. Please."
      "... and prune. Six cherry it is. Anyway, it not being specifically forbidden. I tried to be accommodating. But look how narrow it is behind the counter. People bump into each other. One touch and I am defiled, Mrs. Mendelssohn. So many rules, with the women, and it falls to the man to enforce them; hiring them hardly seems worthwhile sometimes. Still, I told Gabby she could work if she didn't sit down.  But it's a long shift, and she kept sneaking rests on the chair."

     "Is that so..."

     "The chair had to be burned, in the Biblical fashion. It got expensive. Have you ever tried to find acacia wood? It isn't easy, and not cheap, I'll tell you that. So now she just doesn't work those days. A week a month I lose her. I keep track on this chart here."

     "That doesn't strike me as fair to her."

     "Not fair? What is not fair to her? She has a job. Nobody put a gun to her head and forced her to work in the Steinberg Bakery. Our reputation is pristine. People line up to work here. Men anyway. Women, not so much. Still, what about fair to me? Why is it the religious for whom fairness is always forgotten? Why do the men always suffer? Should I pay good money, pay a woman good money, so she can pollute and poison the Steinberg Bakery in the eyes of God once a month? Why should I pay for anything that undermines my sincere religious beliefs? The folks at Hobby Lobby certainly don't do that. The Hobby Lobby machers don't feel the need to pay for things that go against their faith. If Hobby Lobby, a store that sells pipe cleaners and glitter and styrofoam balls can withdraw from the government insurance program, can sue the United States of America, the country that we all love, claiming that some crazy contraception device that only a kurveh would use and that doesn't even affect a fertilized egg, not really, if they can decide it is in fact abortion, if they can play around with the health care of thousands of employees based on their own farkochta religious beliefs, why should my sincere and actually-endorsed-by-the-Lord-God-Almighty-instead-of-cooked-up-later-by-frauds beliefs be held in any less regard?"

    "Well, I should be going now..."
     "I mean, God forbid they should pay for anything of which they don't approve. God forbid that one penny of their money earned selling pots of paste should go to anything that doesn't reflect their own whims happily back so they can nod and smile, admiring them. Because they're special, Mrs. Mendelssohn, they're the one true religion that the entire nation was designed to coddle and flatter. They are they stars of the show. The rest of us, we're nobody. We're the scenery. The chorus. Even though the government certainly asks the rest of us to pay for things we don't necessarily like. Oh ho, yes! Churches pay no tax. But the grips and the stage hands and the supernumeraries, we pay the freight. The Steinberg Bakery, we pay tax — plenty of tax. Am I not then, in a very real sense, underwriting those churches? With my cash money? My taxes also pay for the schools, schools which teach kids all sorts of nonsense that I do not subscribe to—schools that serve their kids Chips Ahoy Cookies at lunch time. I have seen it with my own eyes! That serve them white bread puffed full of air. Bread that tastes like nothing. A slander on the word 'bread...'"
     "If I could just..."     
     "Yet I support that. It seems this Lobby Hobby wants it both ways: part of society, when it serves them, when it comes to having their streets plowed so that more big trucks full of stickers and glass beads and woodburning sets can get to their enormous warehouses full of crap. But when government policy strays against their reproductive whims, they sue." 
     "Ah yes, well, I had better be going. That's all today." 

      "Of course, Mrs. Mendelssohn. Right away. The bread, $3.99, the kolatchke, $5 for the half dozen and I put in an extra one.  That's $8.99, plus 80 cents tax to buy public school lunches made of bread I wouldn't use to wipe the counters at the Steinberg Bakery. That'll be nine dollars and seventy-nine cents, please. Out of ten."

     "Well tell Gabby that I said hello."

     "I will, when she returns, five days from now. Twenty-one cents is your change. And believe me, Mrs. Mendelssohn, I'm not happy about this either. I have things to do today. But faith is faith, and either we honor it or we don't. I am the true victim here, being forced to handle both the front of the shop and to mind the ovens in back. Last month, I lost eight pies—blueberry pies, the best, made from the choicest Michigan blueberries, grown especially for the Steinberg Bakery at sun-kissed blueberry patches outside of Ludington. These pies burned to cinders because Mr. Helmholtz came by for his weekly order, and we got into a conversation, a fascinating conversation about Psalm 119 and the need to constantly be mindful of God's law. I will be honest with you: I forgot about the pies. If Gabby had been here, she would have whisked those pies out of the oven at the precise moment of golden crusted perfection. Very good, she is, about timing the pies. But when she is not here, she is not so good. I should have garnished the cost of the lost pies from her wages. But I try to be a considerate boss. Though in matters of faith, there are no considerations to be made. God is very clear about that. I really should not hire a woman at all. You lose one week out of four, at least until they reach a certain age. But I try to run the Steinberg Bakery in the progressive fashion."
     "Umm, yes, right. Well goodbye then."
     "Yes, goodbye. And you'll see what I mean about those caraway seeds. Such seeds you have never seen."

      Ting-a-ling.   

  

Saturday fun activity — name the palindromes

   

     People assume that the hard part about writing books is the writing part. And there is a certain challenge there. But having written, gee, eight books now, with the ninth on the way, I can tell you that writing books is difficult in the same way that dieting is difficult: it isn't any one moment that's especially challenging, but doing what you need to do to accomplish the task, day in and day out, and persisting even when results seem slow in coming. 
     No, the hardest aspect of "writing books," is not the writing part, but the books part, when the tangible object is published. The new book comes into physical being, and then you have about two minutes to make something happen, to generate buzz and heat and interest during the brief window when the book lingers in stores -- what stores are left — and at the top of web sites, before your book, your baby, your joy and heartbreak, sinks into the slurry of forgotten tomes, never to be seen again. 
     It engenders a certain sense of, well, panic. The moment is now. You've done all this work. You love the result. The clock is ticking. 
     A nightmare really. I used to say that having a book published is like having your children kidnapped and held for ransom at bookstores. They're tied to a chair, whimpering into their gags, struggling against the ropes, waiting for you to do something. You can, diabolically, see them. But you can't rescue them, not by yourself. Someone has to help you. Now. Under these circumstances the slowness of friends to react can be maddening. "What, your book?" they drawl, scratching, stretching, as if they had forgotten. "Oh yeah, man. that's right, I umm, meant to, ah, slide over to the Book Hutt and get it, but these old egg cartons needed to be painted..." and you just want to grab the person by the shoulders and shake them, then draw their face close to yours and shriek, "Buy my book, buy my book ... or, or, or... I'm going to kill you right now."
    Thus I traipse off to book signings, buy books I have no interest in, and in fact will never read, and can't get rid of, because they're signed to me. I remember, years ago, walking down Wabash Avenue to the old Kroch's & Brentano's book store, where Roger Ebert was signing his novel, The Phantom's Mask. The co-worker I had dragged along, to boost the show of support, quizzed me: Why were we doing this? Roger was already rich, already famous. Lots of people would be there. He didn't need us.
     That's not the point, I replied. Friends buy friends' books. It's a moral duty. They're splashing around in the lake, drowning, dying. You've got the rope. Throw them the rope.
     And because I'm a newspaper columnist, that adds an additional level of responsibility. Friends also promote friends' books, or try to. They at least look at them. Thus I found myself, with a bit of gee-I-hope-no-one-is-watching-me apprehension, sitting on the Metra 5:12, opening Carol Weston's new novel, Ava and Pip (Sourcebooks: $15.99). The novel is intended for junior high school girls, which kinda puts me out of its target demographic. No matter. I have known Carol for 32 years, since I walked into her lilac-colored farmhouse on North Ashbury Street in Evanston and rented a room to live in during my senior year at Northwestern — and what a glorious senior year it was, full of sophistication and fun, thanks to Carol and her husband, the playwright Robert Ackerman. Champagne brunches. Dinner parties. Drama. 
     Opening the book's package,  shrugging and sliding it on the shelf, unread, was just not something I was willing to do.
     "DEAR NEW DIARY," the book begins. "You won't believe what I just found out."
     What follows is a witty, warm, wonderful story about Ava, a smart 5th grader in a family addicted, as families sometimes are, to puns and wordplay and palindromes—words and phrases spelled the same way, backward and forward, such as the first man's introduction to the first woman in the Garden of Eden: "Madam I'm Adam." 
      I might have opened the book due to the obligations of friendship, but I kept reading on the book's own merits. I was drawn into Ava's world, her problematic older sister, Pip—why ARE older sisters always such trouble? Her well-intentioned dad, her too-busy mom. Especially her voice, her mind, the way Ava puts things. Here's her description of a boy new to school: "He has as many freckles as Pip and is the kind of boy who's cute if you're the kind of girl who notices. Which I'm not." I love those last three words; the girl doth protest too much, methinks.
      Reading a friend's book is obligatory—finishing is not. Books get started and set aside; I don't write about them all. I can't. I know a lot of writers and, besides, my internal value system is such that, if a book disappoints, I can't stand on a chair and sing its praises insincerely. That doesn't do anybody any favors. I remember my late pal, Jeff Zaslow, gingerly inquiring about The Girls From Ames. I had written about his previous books, but not that one. A silence. "Too many girls from Ames," I finally confessed, as kindly as I could. "I couldn't tell them apart." He seemed to understand. 
     So while I started the book out of one kind of duty, I finished it out of another—it's a good book, with real characters and a compelling story. I had to finish it. As with all good books, I was both eager to find out, and reluctant to have it over, noting with sorrow the dwindling pages. Maybe I don't read enough novels — the last one I read was The Circle by Dave Eggers. But I was charmed to spend time with the 5th grader created by Carol—the advice columnist at Girl's Life for 20 years, she knows of what she speaks—as Ava navigates her world of slumber parties and mean girls and a library writing contest she enters with a tale ... well, I don't want to give too much away.
     Lest my judgment be too constricted by the cords of friendship, whenever I write about a friend's book, I require myself to dig up a criticism, and with Ava and Pip, that is easily done: I thought things worked out perhaps a little too well, a little too neatly. Not to reveal the ending, but let's just say Ava isn't left weeping on her bedspread, neglected by her mother, nor do we see older sister Pip muscled into a straight jacket and dragged off to a mental hospital, writhing and screaming like Frances Farmer. Everybody turns out to be really nice, even supposed mean girl Bea. My impressions of family and school life and life in general are a bit more fraught and unresolved than what Carol presents, so if you are looking for Death of a Salesman, this ain't it. But few 5th grade girls are, I imagine, and I am sincere in that, in the flaw department, that was about all I could come up with. 

     Being a writer, I found the palindromes like little gifts, scattered throughout the book, and rather than puzzle you with a mysterious location today—which keep getting solved before I wake up on Saturday—I thought I'd share three examples from the book, represented by these three pictures. Had I been able to find a photo of some very old cats, I'd have gone with "Senile felines"— I think that was my favorite— but I couldn't, so I offer up these three. Your only hint: the guy in the white suit is Teddy Roosevelt. Figure them out—remember, your answer will be spelled the same, backward or forward—post the answers below, and the first one who gets all three correct will receive one of my blog's limited edition, hand-set, signed and numbered posters, which are going fast. Good luck.

Religious freedom doesn't mean being free to force people to follow your religion

   

     The arc of history bends toward freedom. If you want to understand what has happened over the past decades and centuries, what is happening now, keep that premise in mind. In the past, people were controlled by institutions, which dictated the details of their lives, telling them how to worship, work, dress, think, behave.

     Then gradually, individuals stood up and claimed the right to make those decisions.

     Look, to take one example from Chicago history, at Pullman, the South Side neighborhood that once was the company town for the Pullman Palace Car Co., which manufactured luxury railroad sleeping cars.

     If you worked for Pullman, you lived in Pullman’s town by Pullman’s rules. George Pullman chose the books in the library you could read; he decided what church you could attend. He didn’t like drinking, so residents could not buy liquor. The only bar was at the Florence Hotel, named for his daughter — the idea being that visitors might want to drink, but his workers could not.

     Few today would cast an envious eye on Pullman. We in the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook don’t say: “You know, Allstate is big here. Let’s let them decide what kind of birth control we use.” That wouldn’t fly.

     Yet, right now, in 2014, a case is being discussed by the United States Supreme Court whether Hobby Lobby, a chain of 500 arts and crafts stores, can decide for its 13,000 employees what kind of birth control they use. The company is required to provide health care under the Affordable Care Act and is trying to opt out because some employees would make decisions that are not in keeping with their employer’s religious beliefs. That is a given in most places, but the owners of Hobby Lobby consider it oppression.
     In case you think this matters only in far regions, there are 23 Hobby Lobby stores, plus one opening soon, within 50 miles of Chicago, and if the law goes in the company’s favor, it could affect not just employees but everyone with a boss.
     The company is owned by zealous Christians, who argue that by letting their employees have full health care coverage, which includes such contraception as IUDs and morning-after pills, which the company owners view as a kind of abortion, it would violate the company’s religious rights.
     The company’s religious rights. Versus the rights of the people employed by it.
     Wonder how the case will work out?
     Repeat after me: The arc of history bends toward freedom. (A familiar ring to that; maybe I’m channeling Martin Luther King’s “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” That too).
     Funny. If the issue were something far less significant — say, the type of toothpaste Hobby Lobby workers could use under their dental plan — there would be clarity, and the case would have been laughed out of court. But the issue becomes more clouded because it involves a religious scruple — abortion or, in this case, contraceptives — and because the restraint is being forced on women, a group whose rights are still open to debate.
     The women on the court see this clearly. Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked, could not employers object to any medical procedure: blood transfusions, say, or immunization?
     The Hobby Lobby lawyer said the courts would evaluate each case, which is no doubt true, and a glimpse of chaos.
     “So one religious group could opt out of this and another religious group could opt out of that, and nothing would be uniform,” Justice Elena Kagan observed.
     Exactly. There are many religions in this country. Some people are so in thrall to their own faith they forget that and try to claim that the nation should favor one, invariably their own, oblivious that to favor one would be to favor all. If a Muslim-owned company tried to insist its female employees wear veils, Hobby Lobby would respond in vibrating horror. Yet it would blithely force its own will on employees. Hypocrites.
     You don’t have to go back to Pullman’s day to find companies dictating the details of employees’ lives. If a flight attendant grew too old, or gained weight, or had children, an airline would simply fire her.
     Little by little, freedoms were won — first for men and, then, lately, obviously only partially, for women. The battle continues.
     This case is really very simple to decide. Ask this question: Should individuals be allowed to make their own religious choices? Or should their employers choose for them?
     A toughie, I know. It’s so hard to give others the freedom you demand for yourself.
     How does this end? Hobby Lobby loses. Maybe not this case, now, but eventually. Because, as I said at the start, the arc of history bends toward freedom.

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